On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 14:10, Gautam John
<gautam@prathambooks.org> wrote:
On 30 March 2011 11:49, Srikanth Lakshmanan <
srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
> Getting sick of this popular "urban legand". Why dont we run a site notice
> banner for "atleast India" alone for 2 months. """ Please Note :- Wikipedia
> and Wikileaks are 2 different things""" and link to a detailed note.
or so the quote implies. What he might incorrectly allude to is a
linkage between the two but his criticism of Wikipedia is the model of
knowledge creation.
At best it could have been the usual misqouting / edit cuts and he might have told about Wikipedia at all. Here is what I think would have happened. He would have got some points to speak from one of his under secretaries who would have sourced it from his/her junior[who might have given what Wikipedia is rightly and might have given it for context due common "wiki" in the name, but might have been lost in grapevine] and hence the miinster would have got it wrong.
Though what the minister was being quoted is a valid criticism against Wikipedia, in all possibilities Wikipedia was never his target. I mentioned this confusion as Urban legand since even few of "Software Engineers" I met dont know the differences. A banner campaign will not only clarify Wikipedia is not associated with Wikileaks, but would also create a larger awareness(includes media and people from all walks of life) on Wikimedia movement(which is lacking to a large extent even among regular readers of Wikipedia in India). Banner campaign is very effective in India and we could see that in Wiki 10 celebrations.
Regards,
Srikanth L